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[–] 101 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I recommend visiting the Munch museum in Oslo. Lots of interesting things to see.

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    [–] 64 points 3 months ago* (4 children)

    I felt this way about seeing the mona lisa. It's like 50cm wide, and behind glass, and not that interesting... but there were probably 200 people crowded in front of it all looking at it through their phones.

    It's almost like performance art or something.

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  • [–] 36 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I don't understand why people take pictures of the mona Lisa. Professional photos of it exist online.

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  • [–] 32 points 3 months ago* (2 children)

    The point is to show to others that you stood in front of something famous, the painting itself is of no value to these people

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  • [–] 22 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Not always. Most photos I take are really just intended for future me. A few of them have famous things I care about.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Exactly - I've got a really shitty memory. I'd take a photo so that in 5 years time I'll get a reminder from my photos app - hey, on this day 5 years ago you were in The Louvre.

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  • [–] [S] 13 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I can't imagine any of those photos are coming out well either, so I don't understand the point. I can see a selfie or a picture of your family in front of it, but I'm never going to look at a phone pic of a framed painting behind glass at a distance.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    You can look at it right after you watch the video of those New Year's fireworks from 2019.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Did you see the painting in the other side of the room the Mona Lisa was in? We I went there it was a gigantic and beautiful buffet with dozens and dozens on people. The whole time in the room I was looking the opposite way to her lol

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    [–] 37 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    In my usual Wikipedia rabbit hole journey, I came across some lovely paintings the other day. I ended up going through the page of Johannes Vermeer, admiring a bunch of his works. Consider my surprise when I scrolled by a familiar painting, The Girl with the Pearl Earring. Although the artist's name didn't ring a bell at first, that painting is famous enough that it stopped me in my tracks. Go figure, he's got all these detailed slice-of-life paintings that give a strong sense of what life was like for an average, middle class, Dutch person in the mid-1600s, and yet the only work of his I'd seen before was that one.

    I guess it's kinda like how some musicians can put out multiple albums, yet be forever known as a "one hit wonder" because only one of their songs "made it big."

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  • [–] 14 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I might be a little more informed because I'm Dutch, but Vermeer is fairly well-known, and e.g. The Milkmaid and View of Delft are, I believe, other fairly famous paintings of his (albeit less famous than The Girl with the Pearl Earring).

    Vermeer might have been a pupil of Carel Fabritius, who was a pupil of Rembrandt. The interesting thing about Fabritius is that many of his paintings got destroyed in an explosion (that also killed Fabritius), and only about a dozen remain. Which I think is also mind-blowing: this potential important link between two famous painters might very well himself have produced such wonders, but we'll never know.

    (If you're ever in the area, I would highly recommend a visit to the Mauritshuis in The Hague. And if you like reading, The Goldfinch (referencing the Fabritius painting) by Donna Tartt is the novel that got me into all this in the first place.)

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Vermeer is definitely famous worldwide. This person just didn't know him.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Yep, my schools didn't teach art history. I only learned of French impressionalists in school, and that's just because I took French class. Even art classes didn't touch the classics, so I'm learning through my own studies now as an adult. This is what a typical American education system gives us. :(

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I know it's kinda off topic, but what I find even weirder are bands that are "one hit wonders" in one country, but have like 10 hits and a long career in another country.

    They'll have a whole wikipedia article of awards they've won you've never heard of, and tours they went on, and you're like "they wrote more than one song!?"

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    [–] 31 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Maybe they're not worth looking at? Nobody ever tells You to listen to another song by Spin Doctors.

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  • [–] 35 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Now I want to know which of Two Princes or Little Miss Can't Be Wrong you haven't heard yet. The two-hit-wonder disrespect here is staggering, I say. Staggering!

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    [–] 27 points 3 months ago (3 children)
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    [–] 24 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Klimpt has a similar problem.

    vs. everything else...

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  • [–] 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

    Same as described above and in comments.

    Tons of people taking selfies, pictures, anything.

    Thing is, you really can’t capture anything great about The Kiss if you’re not in person. It’s all about the way the light reflects in the gilding.

    (Source: was in Vienna and saw it in person last year. In case you’re wondering, I don’t think I took a single photo but looked at it for like 20 minutes from every angle I could.)

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  • [–] 21 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Marketing manipulation. We have been conditioned to precieve value in some things over others. It eleminates the idea that you as an individual have to engage and investigate to find your own value of a piece of art. I'm not saying that the popular pieces of an artist aren't incredibly good. Just understand that an artist probably has dozens of other work you might want to engage with and appreciate.

    I've seen this soon many times at art museums. Sure Starry night and Mona Lisa are great but the artists' other masterpieces are literally 10 steps away and people seem to casually ignore. The power of the totebag fridge magnets.

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    [–] 14 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    It's called the "Shot Gun Approach" ... I learned it a long time ago with basic photography. I was so worried about being able to take great photos that I asked a professional photographer about it and he just said take lots of photos, as many as you can ... the 'Shotgun Approach'.

    You just snap a ton of stuff, stuff you think is good, stuff you think is important, stuff you want, stuff you think you should do, this stuff, that stuff, any stuff ... just get the biggest memory card you can get or film or whatever and just take as many photos as you can of everything.

    When you get back, about 98% of all your photos will be shit ... but you will have about a dozen great shots where people will comment on how great a photographer you are.

    You basically blast the entire activity with everything you got ... like a shot gun blast ... a true shot gun blast throws out a lot lead pellets in a general direction. Not all of them will hit their mark but several will.

    It's better than the Sniper Approach ... where you base all your energy, will and hopes into one single shot .. you take all your energy and time into that one shot and if you miss, which is highly likely, you will lose everything and you will be forgotten.

    So whatever you are doing in life ... just give it your all ... most of it will be forgettable but a small part of it will be celebrated because people will think you were a genius for doing it. The more you do, the more likely you will be successful in something.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago

    Counterpoint: sometimes the best still shot requires a particular moment captured with a particular, consciously arranged setup.

    This interview of a veteran NBA photographer breaks it down of how he only has a single shot per shot because of how he necessarily relies on strobes set up to not distract the players or interfere with the broadcast. As a result, he scouts/studies each player and team so that he knows when the right moment is to actually capture the shot, because he can't exactly ask players to do it again.

    If you read interviews of Pulitzer photography winners, they'll often say a lot of the same things: being prepared and being lucky and having that convergence of having incredibly high skill/expertise/understanding of the setting, while being able to capture in every opportunity presented.

    You should capture a lot of photos and examine them to understand how to make them better, and increase your skill level and understand your subject so that you can still optimize for the very best shot possible.

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  • [–] 14 points 3 months ago (11 children)

    My wife works at the munch museum as an art historian ama

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    [–] 11 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I still can't believe "The Scream" is mostly just crayon on cardboard.

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    [–] 11 points 3 months ago

    Reason why people love Scream: mood

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago

    Why was he so productive in 1788?

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago

    Edvard Munch Scream:

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  • I get the same when people post holiday pictures. I'm not going to scroll through 100 images. But if you post 1 to 3 I'll look, so just pick the very best ones.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago

    My favorite part about this is how there are 3 versions of the scream hanging in the Munch museum in Oslo

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